Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Remind me never to discuss Advanced Calculus in this blog, since I know less than nothing about it. Neither should some at the Huffington Post ever write about naval matters, as the Weekly Standard points out:

The Huffington Post routinely allows its authors to write about subjects with which they are completely unfamiliar, largely uninformed, and generally ignorant--take Laurie David and global warming for example--but today's post by Barry Sanders (I wish it was that Barry Sanders) sets a new standard. Sanders's piece is about "the military's addiction to oil," and his point is to illustrate the military's contribution to global warming, but not content merely to opine on something he didn't understand...he had to make his own facts up, too.

Sanders writes:

But, we do know that President Bush ordered the USS Stennis and the USS Ronald Reagan to the Gulf in January 2007 as part of the surge. He also sent a "strike group," led by the nuclear aircraft carrier the USS Eisenhower, along with a cruiser, a destroyer, a frigate, a submarine escort, and a supply ship. Already sitting in the Gulf were ten other "Carrier Task Forces" built around the aircraft carriers Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Chester W. Nimitz, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, Harry S. Truman, and the Abraham Lincoln. Ninety attack planes sit on each carrier's deck, ready at any moment to fly into combat.

The United States has never, ever, had twelve carrier task forces stationed in the Gulf, not this year, not any year.

Exhibit 2:

The USS Abraham Lincoln, familiar to us as the ship on whose deck President Bush declared to the nation, on May 2, 2003,"Mission Accomplished," remains in service, but the military keeps classified all the numbers about its fuel consumption. The USS Lincoln helped deliver the opening salvos and air strikes in Operation Iraqi Freedom. From March 2003 until mid-April of that same year, during its deployment in the Gulf, the Navy launched 16,500 sorties from its deck, and fired 1.6 million pounds of ordnance from its guns.

The USS Abraham Lincoln has no "guns," other than those used in air defense. The 1.6 million pounds of ordnance should refer to bombs dropped in Iraq via aircraft.

Wait there's more at the link. I might also add that the Navy only possesses 11 carriers in commission, and when its last fossil fueled flattop the Kitty Hawk is retired, only 10.